What Was The Role of David Herold

[John Fazio]

(03-05-2013 05:33 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(03-05-2013 03:01 AM)John Fazio Wrote:  As for Isabel, I know nothing about her, nor about her relationship with the man-boy, and while I do not discount the feminine mystique, it seems a stretch that he would travel all the way to Boston for a dalliance when he already had a "binder" full of women elsewhere.

John, the reason I asked and why I am undecided on the meeting with Confederate operatives is because on July 24, 1864, Booth wrote to Isabel Sumner, "I will come at once to Boston."

(03-05-2013 03:01 AM)John Fazio Wrote:  And recall, lastly, that Robert Lincoln said, in later years, that he had positive proof that a member of his father's cabinet had been guilty of treason, a statement that ties in well with Jacob Thompson's statement that he would not write memoirs because to do so would positively ruin a man who was still active in national politics.

John, do you have a reliable source for this statement by Robert Lincoln? Is this part of the "burning papers" story? Are you talking about something separate from the Nicholas Murray Butler story?

Roger:

I did not know about Booth's letter to Isabel, or, if I knew, I forgot about it. Well, there's nothing wrong with killing two birds with one stone, or at least one bird and three or four gorillas.

As for the source re Robert Lincoln, here's what I have:

Robert Todd Lincoln died in 1926. Some time before he died, he burned a great collection of his father's letters and private papers. A friend, Mr. Young, stopping in on a visit to Mr. Lincoln's home in Manchester, Vermont, was appalled to see these documents going up in flames. "Mr. Young at once remonstrated...Mr. Lincoln replied he did not intend to continue his destruction--but the papers he was destroying contained the documentary evidence of the treason of a member of Lincoln's Cabinet, and he thought it was best for all that such evidence be destroyed. (Citing Emanuel Hertz, The Hidden Lincoln, Preface, Empahsis supplied) Also quoted in Van Doren Stern, The Man Who Killed Lincoln, p. 406, and in Vaughan Shelton, Mask of [i]Treason[/i], pp. 351, 352. (Roscoe, Web of Conspiracy, p. 533)

Stringfellow saying that he had been in "constant communication with an officer occupying an important position about Mr. Lincoln". (Tidwell, Hall and Gaddy, Come Retribution, p. 412) (Bear in mind that Stringfellow was an especailly rabid Confederate agent, a hater of blacks and the Union and one who spoke openly of wholesale killing to further the cause of Southern independence.)

Jacob Thompson telling the New York Times, on November 20, 1883, that he had decided not to write his life's story, because if he did, it would "utterly ruin" at least one man who had the confidence of the Union government at the time of the Canadian commission and at the same time had aided the Confederacy; that man was still in Congress. (Charles Higham, Murdering Mr. Lincoln, pp. 236, 237

John